For over twenty years, Irina Pått has been known and recognized for her handmade and ecological design lighting and 3-D paperworks. Her new material is sustainable birch veneer. She has shown these new works in three successful exhibitions during the last two years.
Since her childhood, Pått has been dancing classical ballet and it is dance itself that has given inspiration for these new pieces. She has worked with lighting during much of her career, and now she is using LED lights to create a line of light as an effective detail. There is a certain nostalgia she feels in these light effects, as she recalls the first neon lights she saw on the Lasipalatsi building roof in the 1950’s, and remembers the huge impact they made on her.
These lightworks are designed for both public and private venues. The pieces are both functional products and pure works of art, which challenge and blur the categorization between functional objects and visual arts. They honour the history of reliefs, while being very much her own expression. The works are reliefs with sunken hollow lighting. The stripes of different layers resemble “Giants’ Kettles” from the Ice Age. The environmentally friendly veneer is finished with wax. Using wood in buildings and interiors meets the criteria of sustainability. As well, wood has a positive effect on health and well-being and provides solutions to indoor air problems and noise reduction, while reducing our carbon footprint.
Pått received her B.A. from the Institute of Industrial Arts, Helsinki in 1969. From 1986 to 1990 she studied in Canada and received her Master’s degree from the University of Arts and Design/Aalto University, Helsinki in 1990.
Her works of art have been exhibited around the world: Kunsthalle in Helsinki, American Craft Museum in New York, Mingei Museum in San Diego, Harbourfront Gallery in Toronto, Louvre Musee des Arts Decoratififs in Paris, Rohsska Museet in Gothenburg, Rundetarn in Copenhagen and Imadate Exhibition of Paper Art in Japan.
Important public and private collections: Serlachius Art Sauna at Mantta, Finnish State Collection, Bank of Finland, City of Helsinki, G18, Foundation Pro Artibus, City Hall of Raseborg.
Isabella Chydenius (b.1988) is a Finnish interdisciplinary artist based in Helsinki and Berlin, Germany. Chydenius has recently graduated from a Master of Fine Art degree at the Michaelis School of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town, in April 2021. Her research-based work focuses on investigating societal structures of femininity, gender and safety/violence. She is interested in the behavioural social constructs behind what constitutes as feminine and masculine in contemporary heteropatriarchal time. Her interdisciplinary conceptual work combines technologies such as light, sound, videography and interactive animation, to create experiential installations. Chydenius uses the medium of light in the specific colour of Club Pink as a metaphor for topics of her research. She also works with more traditional mediums like textiles, thread, clay, painting and found objects which she uses to form sculptural installations or audience activated compositions.
WORKS ON LIGHT AND SHADOW ”I am interested in combining natural and artificial light into my works, as well as in darkness and shadows. In my sculptures, installations and other public works of art I study light and space: the way materials reflect light, and how artistic and functional lighting can be combined. The multiple public light pieces and contest propositions I have carried out have neared on environmental lighting planning, with the possibilities of visual arts realised. [When working] in collaboration with architects and other design professionals, art and artistic lighting can form as a natural part of a building, space or urban environment.” Jaakko Niemelä has participated in the Architecture of Light -training schedule in the updating education programme lead by Aalto University's School of Art and Design.
Jani Rättyä (born 1973) is a Finnish artist specialized in sculpture and painting and has been exhibiting his work since 1998. His paintings have been described as luminous, vivid, and oddly communicative.
Janne Bergmark lights recycled and ready-made materials to create new forms and stories. Most of his minimalist light art pieces are planned for outdoor exhibitions. His art pieces are shown for example at Metronom Festival.
Janne Parviainen is a light artist from Helsinki. His work has been featured in various magazines, books and art blogs such as The National Geographic, The Guardian, Daily Mail, Wired, Juxtapoz, Spiegel Online, Metro Newspaper. Janne has worked with well-known brands such as Adobe Systems Inc., Olight and Nippon Television producing high-level artistic material for commercial use. His work has been on display globally on exhibitions, light art festivals and museums. Janne Parviainen has been working as an art educator for 20 years in different art schools in Finland and arranges light art workshops in Finland and abroad.
Jari Vuorinen (born 1975) is Finnish designer, light artist and speaker. He works as Creative Director for Lighting Design Collective with a passion for adding layers of expression and content to architecture. The tools he uses are light and media. Vuorinen holds a BA in Lighting Design.
Jere Suontausta (b. 1994) is a multidisciplinarily and multisensorially working artist based in Helsinki. In his practice he prefers to embrace both intuition and serendipity, taking often a rather non-rational approach to pottering around with found materials. Suontausta declares his artistic aspire to be pursuing something otherworldly by means of combining familiar and unknown in peculiar ways.
Suontausta graduated as Master of Arts in 2020 from the Theatre Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki, Degree Programme in Lighting Design.
Jere Suontausta is a multisensorially working artist based in Helsinki. In his practice he prefers to embrace both intuition and serendipity, taking often a rather non-rational approach to pottering around with found materials. Suontausta declares his artistic aspire to be pursuing something otherworldly by means of combining familiar and unknown in peculiar ways.
https://www.jeresuontausta.com
Antti Hevosmaa is a designer and musician working in Kouvola and Helsinki, Finland. Generally known as the soloist in the band VIRTA, Hevosmaa has recently worked with kinetic spatial elements using the alias Koje.
Joakim Udd's working process is driven by an interest in dimensions, minimalism and its maximization. He has worked extensively with live performance and the performing arts. Udd has also performed curatorial work for light art events and has a background in event production and design.
When I find interesting architectures or outdoor sites, I make sculpture&light installations.
The base of every piece is the material and its chemical and visual properties. https://johannaalanko.com/
Juan Kasari a MFA from the Academy of fine arts, Time and Space Arts study programme, is a visual artist living and working in Helsinki. His works have recently been shown at Sinne gallery in Helsinki, Photographic gallery Hippolyte and MUU Gallery in Helsinki, Photographic center Peri in Turku, as well as several group exhibitions in Finland and Abroad. The reality around us is composed of random events, probabilities and intentional events. They are all complex phenomena, whether visible or invisible.We as humans exist in a no man’s land between things and meanings. New things and meanings emerge from the process of encounters and events around us. His installation works renders tangible states of isolation, transitoriness and ephemerality. The artworks are large abstract colour surfaces that avoid both the figurative idiom and narrativity. They are also in a constant state of change. The artificial and natural light, the layers of superimposed video projections and the viewer’s presence all play upon the gallery space and the works, giving rise to new changeable meanings. Kasari’s works are based on Mondrian’s idea of pure beauty that is devoid of figurative or narrative content. The projections employ primary colours and their combinations. In his artistic work, Juan Kasari explores the internal tensions of humanity and microcosmoses. His previous major solo shows (Gated Community and Real White Panthers) were about real-life closed communities. In his more recent exhibitions, Kasari’s visual vocabulary has become more abstract, yet addressing the same themes.
Juha Rouhikoski has worked with light since 1994. He is continuously looking for ways to utilize the secret, visible and invisible wavelengths of light.He is currently working on his artistic research PhD in the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki.
Jukka Hautamäki is a Helsinki-based media artist who works with artificial intelligence, lens-based media, sound and electronics. The themes of Hautamäki’s art explore the relationship between machine vision and human perception, materiality and the serial, continually changing repetition of images.
Jukka Huitila is a working light and video artist, whose projects involve buildings, public spaces, events and performing arts. He is equally at ease working on site specific performances or lighting up massive edifices like the Helsinki Olympic Stadium.
Both artists have versatile backround from theatre, opera and architectural lighting. Jussi has done many light art pieces for various light art festivals, as well as he has been curator of light art festival Nuutajärvi LUX for two years.
Kari Alonen (b.1953) is a long-standing visual artist from Central Finland who has become known both for his outspoken art and for a new combination of stone, glass and light. Social criticality and humor are weapons with which Kari takes a stand on the grievances he sees. “The partisan of humor beats the army of squares”.
Kari began his career as a civil servant, but he soon found that making art was more appealing than creating a career in an agency. The shortcomings of the system also meant that he did not want to be part of that system. On the contrary, these experiences act as a springboard for his stance-taking art. Eventually, for Kari, the desire to try overcame the fear of failure, and he ended his career as a civil servant to start making art full-time, without any other livelihood. This is how the official became an artist.
Kirsti Taiviola is a visual artist while specializing in glass and light. The red thread in Taiviola’s works has been an interest in the possibilities of light and glass as tools of transmitting observations and making something visible. She has worked with questions of materiality, time and authorship and her works often pay respect to the craftsmanship of glassmaking. For her glass is, above all, a medium that allows her to work with optics and the experience of light and color. She frequently uses handmade free-form glass lenses to create projections of light. Taiviola's recent public artworks are Auringon laulu (The Canticle of the Sun), an altar piece in Söderkulla Church in Sipoo and Kenno (Honeycomb), a light installation in the tunnel leading to the University of Helsinki metro station in Helsinki. Both completed in 2021. Paju (Willow), a “baptism tree” -sculpture combining light, glass and bronze, was completed in Tapiola Church in Espoo in 2022. Taiviola’s works are included in the collections of the Finnish National Gallery and The Finnish Glass Museum.
KOKIMO is a group of artists, founded in 2010 in Helsinki. All eight KOKIMO members work independently in performing and visual arts, and together as KOKIMO their work is both collaborative and collective. KOKIMO explores the relations between people and their environment, and uses the experiential perceptions gained as a material in their work. In KOKIMO’s pieces, the emphasis is on sensitivity towards the environment, on multisensory experiences, and on an active participant position. The group’s work is both space and site sensitive. Ecological and ethical values are always present in KOKIMO’s work. The light in KOKIMO pieces can be either the existing light, a narally changing light that forms a part of the work, or light created with spotlights. It can also mean limiting the visibility, using darkness as a part of the artwork, or traditional light art. KOKIMO’s work has been seen both in Finland and internationally, and the group’s light art has been exhibited in Helsinki in both LUX Helsinki and the FLASH biennial. KOKIMO’s members are Kristian Ekholm, Markus Heino, Raisa Kilpeläinen, Viljami Lehtonen, Anna Murtola, Veera-Maija Murtola, Anna Pöllänen, and Salla Salin. Kilpeläinen, Murtola, and Pöllänen are responsible for the light art.
Liisi Soroush & Camilo Sanchez; Lasismi: Kaappo Lähdesmäki; Niko Tiainen
Konvolv is a multidisciplinary international new media collective discussing societal, political and environmental complexities. Our collective outcomes deliver interactive, participatory and immersive experiences along with concepts on futuristic scenarios and frameworks. The artistic and design practice is an interplay between speculative, critical and reflective design. We reflect upon and integrate our know-how on digital human rights, embodied / sound and physical interaction, queer media art, decolonization, open society activism, surveillance, power structures, musicology, post- and transhumanism, human-material interaction, new materialism, mediaarcheology, ubicomp, HCI, software engineering, creative coding, machine learning, post-WIMP and rhythmanalysis. As a collective, we strive for observing places, spaces, environments and ambiences unfolding into site and case-specific narratives that incorporate data flows with a meaningful message. Our efforts translate into a variety of site-specific new media art formats connected to local inhabitants; living or nonliving, human or non-human, animals and entities. Whilst examining human-machine collaboration, we aim for explorations through-provoking senses merging into the state of presence.
Leena Kangaskoski’s artistic practice is build around the notion of materials and symbols being porous and leaking into each other. She uses everyday actions and materials, often by amplifying a chosen characteristic or repeating it to form a mass. Her exploration of material narratives and their latent potentials connects to a search for something that might emerge, moving intuitively from fabulation to fabrication. She explores an interest for popular science stories and the common ground that lies enclosed within the lithosphere.
Leena Kangaskoski graduated from the Royal College of Art, London in 2011. She currently lives and works in Helsinki, Finland and is a member of Association of Finnish Sculptors and MUU Artists’ Association.
Founder / Director at Large: Tapio Rosenius
Creative Director / Founding Partner: Jari Vuorinen
In our work we seek to combine deep understanding of human psychology, behavioural science, digital technologies, interaction, digital content development, lighting design and project realisation. We believe in collaboration and collective way of achieving common goal.
Our multicultural team has backgrounds in lighting, architecture, design, digital arts, product development, software development and virtual reality. We operate in open "anti-disciplinary" fashion where the project team as a whole contributes freely to the process.
Our approach attracts innovation leaders from real-estate development, architecture, urban development, retail, branding, interior design, commercial centres, academia and research.
Light has been an important element in Maaria Wirkkala’s work since the beginning of her career: Urban environments, or light that takes a form of a house, illuminated blind walls, that are normally un noticed,- shadow of a glass ladder, that is stronger than the object itself. “I work with what I see and with what I don’t want to see”: she says herself. Rosa Martinez wrote about her work for Venice Biennial 2001:”Two fundamental forces coalesce in the work of Maaria Wirkkala – the desire to illuminate shadows and the need to establish new relationships between people, places and things. Maaria Wirkkala sets out from a given situation and explores its complexity in order to uncover its poetic potential or charge it with new meanings. Some items in her vocabulary (chairs, screens, fields of light) feature in different works, creating an associative continuum of emotions and reflections which on each occasion take on new meaning.” Rosa Martinez for Venice Biennale 2001) Maaria Wirkkala has participated in several international exhibitions (Venice Biennale, Istanbul Biennale, Echigo Tsumari Art Triennial)
The works of sound and light designer Marko Häkkinen create something new and unprecedented. Immersive audio technology takes people to new, holistic experiences. Works created in the city center, parks, or public indoor spaces bring art for everyone to experience, guiding them from everyday life into other worlds. Influences drawn from nature are perceptible, and in the execution, ecological values meet advanced technology. Behind the works is a desire to create space for relaxation, reflection, and profound experiences. Light and soundscapes weave around the narratives of the works, guiding the listener towards significant questions and experiences. The positive effects of music and soundscapes on the human mind and well-being are of interest to the sound designer. Natural ambiences and meditative soundscapes sometimes grow into orchestral composed music, and the lights live alongside the sound. The works emanate peace and beauty, making them easily approachable for all ages.
Since graduating from Satakunta Polytechnic, Kankaanpää Art School in 2016 as BA of Culture and Arts he has worked as a professional visual artist and entrepreneur mainly focusing on public art. His artworks combine sculpture, painting, light art, graphic art, photography, environmental art, and video art. Light is a key element in all of his work and many of his public artworks have different appearances with daylight and artificial light. Besides working as a visual artist since 1997, Mauri also has a BA degree in Media and Communication and has worked widely in the audiovisual field mainly as Art Director and Graphic Designer. As a musician he has released nine albums and also written, illustrated, and published two Otso-Karhu children’s storybooks.
The Mechanit Project is a Helsinki-based art collective formed in 2015. The group is especially interested in the agency of machines. The members are: Atte Olsonen, Teo Lanerva, Jani Hietanen, Ukko-Pekka Itäpelto and Soili Huhtakallio. They're working in the fields of installation and performing arts.
Lighting designer (Master of Arts (Theatre and Drama)) b. 1984, Lives in Brussels, Belgium.
Meri Ekola is attracted by light as an expressive medium because of its dramatic potential. With her work she wish to generate unique aesthetic experiences in people’s minds and a strong feeling of presence in the moment. She has gained experience by working both in the wide field of performing arts and architectural lighting design. In each production she seeks to find a specific role for lighting and use it as an expressive medium.
Mia Erlin is a media artist working with light, sound and video. She has done temporary installations for urban spaces and light festivals as well as permanent artworks in public spaces. Mia Erlin has graduated from the Department of Light and Sound Design at the Treatre Academy and worked as an artist and designer since 1997.
CONTACT INFORMATION
BLAF Best of Light Art in Finland
is hosted by
Finnish Light Art Society FLASH
2877700-6
LightArtFi
Producer: Annukka Ketola
annukka.ketola@valotaiteenseura.fi
+358 40 735 3972
Curators:
Mia Kivinen / mia.kivinen@valotaiteenseura.fi
Anna Björklund / anna.bjorklund@valotaiteenseura.fi
